i feel like a lot of people need to hear this lately but. you gotta stop taking numbers so seriously on the internet
take it from someone who went through that shit first hand. when i was on twitter, the numbers culture there utterly consumed me. it came to a point where no matter what kind of attention i got, it was never enough—because it never compared to “that one time.” i became an asshole who was constantly asking people to retweet, to share, to comment, because i was always chasing the same high from times where my work “blew up.”
it genuinely makes me sad to see so many people falling into the same trap i did. it’s okay to enjoy feedback on something you worked hard on—i’m not saying it isn’t. what you have to be careful of, though, is perceiving low numbers as failure.
just because a piece gets low notes, doesn’t mean your work is bad. it also doesn’t mean people don’t care, or that they aren’t doing enough to help you share your work around. sometimes the algorithm just fucks you over. sometimes the time of day is wrong. sometimes the subject matter is just too niche to catch people’s attention.
i guess what i’m trying to say is give yourself some grace. try and pull yourself free of the mentality of always needing more than you have. your worth is not in the numbers you get, nor are your abilities. this kind of mindset fucked me up for years, and i just hope that some of what i’m saying helps people
So I’m on a trip with my robotics team and there’s only two “girls” (me, an enby, and a cis girl), so we get our own beds in our own room, but the guys are rooming four to a room, but there’s only two beds in each room. Which means that two guys are sleeping on the floor every night.
I’m not joking. They were literally arguing over who’s sleeping on the floor tonight (apparently they plan on rotating).
And I asked them “why don’t you just share a bed?” And they all gave me the same answer:
“No, that’s weird! That’d be gay!”
And I just looked at them and I decided to break the bad news to them
“If lying next to another guy makes you wanna suck dick, you already wanted to suck dick.”
I’ve never seen so many Straight Guys™️ enraged by a single sentence before